The world’s passions and conflict of the early 20th century were to shape the new nation’s history, despite its physical distance from their epicentres. In some respects this was the least positive of the major periods of Australian history. Nationalism grew in strength, but it killed and sterilized as much as it inspired; egalitarianism tended to foster mediocrity; dependence on external power and models prevailed. Yet creativity and progress survived, and Australia’s troubles were small compared with those of many contemporary societies.

Drabness was most evident in economic affairs. At the broadest level of generality, the period did little more than continue the themes of the 1860–90 generation. The most important such themes were the increasing industrialization and improvement of communications; railways reached their peak of 27,000 miles in 1941, and meanwhile came the motor boom. In the agricultural sector there was significant expansion of exports, with wheat, fruits, meat, and sugar becoming much more important than theretofore. But just as manufactures received increasingly high tariff protection, so the marketing of these goods often depended on subsidy. Hence, the sheep’s back continued to be the nation’s great support in world finance. Metals, gold especially, were important in the early years, but thereafter this resource conspicuously failed to provide the vitality of earlier and later times. The worldwide economic depression of the 1930s affected Australia, especially its primary industries; otherwise, the overall rate of growth, and probably of living standards, too, scrambled upward—more quickly than average in the years around 1910 and again in the early 1940s.

In national politics, candidates fought for office with increasing vigour and resource, while their administrative performances generally began well but then ebbed. A constant theme was the strengthening of the central government against the states. This complemented the high degree of homogeneity, especially in personal and social matters, that extended through Australia’s great physical spread; it was expressed primarily through the Commonwealth’s financial powers—at first especially relating to customs and excise duties but later by direct taxation. From World War I (1914–18) both levels of government imposed income taxes, but in 1942 the federal government virtually annexed the field, with the high court’s approval. The establishment of a national capital at Canberra, where parliament first sat in 1927 after having met in Melbourne since federation, symbolized this situation. The strengthening of the Commonwealth was scarcely a product of popular enthusiasm. Several constitutional referenda upheld the rights of the states, each of which had its own distinct political, cultural, and social characteristics.

The first two prime ministers were Edmund Barton (1901–03) and Alfred Deakin (1903–04), who had headed the federation movement in New South Wales and Victoria, respectively. They were liberal protectionists. Their ministries established a tariff, an administrative structure, and the White Australia immigration policy that excluded Asians. They also established the High Court and initiated legislation for a court of conciliation and arbitration. This carried to the highest point in the world the principles of industrial arbitration and judicial imposition of welfare and justice through wage and working-condition awards.

In 1904 John Christian Watson led the first, brief Labor cabinet, followed by George Houston Reid’s conservative free-trade ministry. Deakin led again (1905–08), and Andrew Fisher was Labor’s second prime minister (1908–09); his ministry was defeated when liberals and conservatives “fused” in Deakin’s third term (1909–10). Labor then won its first clear majority at election, which it barely lost in 1913 and regained, still under Fisher, in 1914. These changing ideologies did not hinder—perhaps even prompted—ambitious governmental policies. Social services were extended with old-age pensions (1908) and maternity grants (1912); protection rose markedly in a 1908 tariff; the Commonwealth Bank was established; and an army and navy developed.

The new nation was psychologically as well as physically prepared for war. Fear of attack became increasingly directed against Japan, prompting pressure on Great Britain for a firmer policy in the New Hebrides (since 1886 supervised jointly by Britain and France); this was achieved in 1906–07. Although many Australians criticized Britain when the latter appeared negligent of local interests, the dominant note was profound loyalty to the empire. Colonial troops had fought in both the Sudan and South African (Boer) wars. In 1914, when World War I began, politicians of all hues rallied to the imperial cause.

World War I

Some 330,000 Australians served in World War I; 60,000 died, and 165,000 suffered wounds—few nations made such relatively heavy sacrifice. The most famous engagement of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) was in the Dardanelles Campaign (1915); the day of the landing at Gallipoli—April 25—became the preeminent day of national reverence. Even before Gallipoli, Australian troops had occupied German New Guinea, and the Australian warship Sydney sank the German cruiser Emden near the Cocos Islands (November 9, 1914). After the Dardanelles Australians fought primarily in France; Ypres, Amiens, and Villers Bretonneux were among the battles, all marked by slaughter. In Palestine the Australian light horse and cavalry corps contributed to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire.

The war profoundly affected domestic affairs. Economically, it acted as a super-tariff, benefiting especially textiles, glassmaking, vehicles, and the iron and steel industry. Such products as wool, wheat, beef, and mutton found a readier market in Britain, at inflated prices. But the shock of war affected politics much more, especially by giving full scope to the furious energy of William Morris Hughes, who supplanted Fisher as Labor prime minister in October 1915. Soon afterward he visited Britain. There his ferocity as a war leader won acclaim, and he became convinced that Australia must contribute still more. He advocated military conscription for overseas service, but a referendum in October 1916 repudiated this proposal, and immediately afterward the Labor parliamentary caucus moved no confidence in Hughes’s leadership. He continued as prime minister of a “national” government, however, even after losing a second conscription referendum in December 1917. The referenda in particular and war stress in general made these years uniquely turbulent in Australian history. The Labor Party lost other men of great ability along with Hughes. The split solidified a long-standing trend for Roman Catholics to support the party. Hughes’s enemies also included the small but growing number of extremists—most notably the Sydney section of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)—who opposed the war on doctrinaire grounds.

The postwar years

The aftermath of war continued, but finally resolved, this turbulence. Some radicals hoped that returning servicemen would force social change, but instead the Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia (later called the Returned Services League of Australia) became a bastion of conservative order, some of its supporters ready to use physical force against local people they considered “bolsheviks.” The Labor Party faltered, its members adopting a more radical socialist type of platform in 1921, but with far from uniform conviction. (In 1918 the name Australian Labor Party [ALP] was adopted throughout Australia.) When the challenge came to Hughes’s leadership early in 1923, it arose partly from the conservative-business wing of Hughes’s own Nationalist Party (its representative, Stanley Melbourne Bruce, becoming prime minister) and partly from the Country Party, which from late 1922 held a crucial number of parliamentary seats. Although led by wealthy landowners, the Country Party won support from many small farmers; it benefited too from its former-soldier image and from widespread country-versus-city feeling. Its leader, Earle C.G. Page, had considerable, if erratic, force.

Bruce continued as prime minister until 1929, with Page his deputy in Nationalist-Country coalitions. Bruce strove to buoy the economy by attracting British investment and fostering corporative capitalism. Tariffs, bounties, prices, and public indebtedness all rose. There was considerable administrative innovation—e.g., the Loan Council regulated all government borrowing—and the successful Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (later called the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation [CSIRO]) was established in 1926 to apply scientific expertise to developmental problems. The worldwide development of consumer industry had its impact: the revolution in transportation provided by the automobile is the best example, although full-scale car production was still in the future.

With much economic activity subsidized—the exception being one primary product, wool—Australia was particularly vulnerable to the Great Depression of the 1930s. It struck hard: unemployment exceeded one-fourth of the work force and imposed a degree of social misery rarely known in Australian history. The rate of recovery was uneven, manufactures doing better than primary industry. Population growth slowed; at the nadir, emigration exceeded immigration.

Politics reflected the impact. James Henry Scullin succeeded Bruce as prime minister in October 1929, but his Labor ministry suffered the real squeeze of events; within the ALP there was considerable division as to how government should react to the Depression. Some favoured a generally inflationist policy, with banks facilitating credit issue and governments extending public works. Right-wing Labor distrusted such a policy; radicals would have gone further by renouncing interest payment on overseas loans. Conservative opinion argued for deflationary policies—curtailed government expenditure, lower wages, balancing the budget, and the honouring of interest commitments. In June 1931 the Commonwealth and the state governments agreed on a plan, called the Premiers’ Plan. Although the plan had some inflationary features, it foreshadowed a one-fifth reduction in government spending, including wages and pensions—a considerable affront to Labor’s traditional attitudes.

Against this background the government disintegrated. Before the Premiers’ Plan, some Labor right-wingers, led by Joseph Aloysius Lyons, had crossed to the opposition. In November some leftist dissidents voted against Scullin, forcing his resignation. In the elections that followed, Labor suffered a heavy defeat. The new prime minister was Lyons, whose followers had coalesced with the erstwhile Nationalists to form the United Australia Party (UAP). Lyons led a wholly UAP government until 1934 and UAP-Country coalitions until his death in 1939.

The Lyons governments provided stability and not much more. Recovery was uneven and sporadic, quicker in manufacturing than in primary industry, aided more by market forces than by governmental planning. Two policies failed to fulfill expectations—the Imperial Economic Conference, held at Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in 1932, improved trade slightly, but the integrated economic community for which some had hoped never developed. Australia’s trade diversion policy of 1936, which tried to redress the imbalance of imports from Japan and the United States, offended those countries and actually reduced exports further. A plan for national insurance, the Lyons governments’ most ambitious social legislation, also aborted. These mishaps did not much bother the electorate; improvement, even if meagre, was enough to retain favour.

Internal division was the greater threat to the government. This became manifest after Lyons’s death. The UAP elected Robert Gordon Menzies its new leader (and therefore prime minister); but the decision was hard fought, and it was criticized publicly and vehemently by Page, still leader of the Country Party. Nevertheless, Menzies retained office; but internal division persisted, the coalition’s parliamentary majority was tiny, and Menzies resigned in August 1941. Arthur William Fadden, the new leader of the Country Party, then took office, but in October he gave way to John Curtin and a Labor ministry.

While the electorate generally voted conservative, Australia shared the common Western experience of the interwar years in the rise of a small, vigorous communist movement. Founded in 1922, the Australian Communist Party made most headway in the big industrial unions and in Sydney; it also had some influence and supporters among the intelligentsia, especially in the 1930s. The party suffered a share of internal factionalism but for the most part was able to present a united face to the public.

Fascism achieved no formal political recognition in Australia, but there were hints of sympathy toward fascist attitudes—D.H. Lawrence wrote of such in his novel Kangaroo, based on a brief visit in 1922; and an “Australia First” movement began in literary nationalism but drifted into race mystique and perhaps even treason. An intellectual movement of more lasting force developed among a group of young Roman Catholic intellectuals in Melbourne in the mid 1930s. They developed a commitment to social justice and against communism, somewhat in the manner of G.K. Chesterton. This was known as the Catholic Social Movement, and it had considerable influence.

Whereas Australia had been virtually spoiling for war before 1914, passivity became the international keynote after 1920. At the Paris Peace Conference that formally concluded World War I, Hughes was his fire-eating self, especially in defense of Australia’s interests in the Pacific. Thus he won a mandate for erstwhile German New Guinea and Nauru (an atoll in the central Pacific) and effectually opposed a Japanese motion proclaiming racial equality, which he thought might presage an attack on Australia’s immigration laws. In the League of Nations, Australia was an independent member from the outset. Yet in following years “the empire” became the object of even more rhetoric and more desperate hope than earlier. Australia did not ratify the Statute of Westminster (1931, embodying the 1926 Balfour Report as to the constitutional equality of the dominions) until 1942. The UAP governments followed Britain closely in its attitude toward the totalitarian expansion of the 1930s; if Australian influence counted for anything, it was to strengthen appeasement of Germany and Japan. Although fear of Japan continued, that country’s accession to the fascist camp did not provoke a tougher governmental line. The government suspected that Britain could not control the Eastern Hemisphere but found no answer to that dire problem. The Labor Party meanwhile was even more incoherent and variable in matters of foreign policy than were its social democratic counterparts elsewhere in the Western world: isolationism and antifascism were equal and opposing forces.

World War II

When war came again, however, the nation’s response was firm—some 30,000 Australians died in World War II (1938–45), and 65,000 were injured. From early in the war, the Royal Australian Air Force was active in the defense of Britain. The Australian Navy operated in the Mediterranean Sea (1940–41), helping to win the Battle of Cape Matapan (March 1941). Australian troops fought in the seesaw battles of North Africa. In mid 1941 Australians suffered heavy losses both in the Allied defeats in Greece and Crete and in the victories in the Levant. Meanwhile, the German general Erwin Rommel was scoring his greatest triumphs in North Africa. Out of these emerged the successful Allied defense of Tobruk, carried out substantially by Australians (April–December 1941), and the decisive victory at the battles of El-Alamein, in which an Australian division played a key role.

After the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (December 7, 1941), however, the focus shifted homeward. The Japanese victories of the following months more than fulfilled the fantasies that fear and hate had long prompted in Australia. On February 15, 1942, 15,000 Australians became prisoners of war when Singapore fell to Japanese forces, and four days later war came to the nation’s shores when Darwin was bombed. Then came a Japanese swing southward that by August threatened to overrun Port Moresby, New Guinea.

The United States became Australia’s major ally. In a famous statement (December 1941), Prime Minister Curtin declared: “I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free from any pangs about our traditional links of friendship to Britain.” A sharper note of independence from Britain came when Curtin insisted (February 1942) that Australian troops recalled from the Middle East should return to Australia itself and not help in the defense of Burma (Myanmar), as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wished. Conversely, American needs prompted total response to Curtin’s call. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur established his headquarters first in Melbourne and then in Brisbane. In May the Australian navy assisted in the American victory in the Battle of the Coral Sea, which was a turning point in the war, and the two countries’ troops thereafter fought in many joint land battles. The American soldier became a common figure in the Australian state capitals, forging the biggest single link in the social relations between the two countries.

On land the fortunes of war turned against the Japanese in August–September 1942, beginning with an Allied (primarily Australian) victory at Milne Bay, New Guinea. More prolonged—and of more heroic dimension in Australian eyes—was the forcing back of the Japanese from southern New Guinea over the Kokoda Trail. Then followed a long attrition of Japanese forces elsewhere in New Guinea and the islands, with Australia initially playing a major role and subsequently playing a role secondary to American forces. Australian volunteers and conscripts fought in these campaigns, the government and people having accepted the legitimacy of sending conscripts as far north as the Equator and as far west and east as the 110th and 159th meridians.

The war brought some passion into domestic affairs, albeit less than in World War I. Curtin’s government exercised considerable control over the civilian population, “industrial conscription” being scarcely an exaggerated description. Overall this was accepted—partly because of the crisis, partly because the government showed purposefulness and capacity. Curtin easily won the 1943 elections; thereafter his ministry and the bureaucracy gave considerable thought to postwar reconstruction, hoping to use war-developed techniques to achieve greater social justice in peace.

The war carried industrialization to a new level. The production of ammunition and other matériel (including airplanes), machine tools, and chemicals all boomed. Meanwhile, primary production lost prestige, aid, and skills, so that the 1944 output was but two-thirds that of 1939–40. Urban employment was bountiful, and concentration in the state capitals became more marked than ever; many families had two or more income earners. Thus, affluence quickened; federal child endowment from 1940 and rationing of scarce products helped distribute this wealth. The gross national product increased by more than one-half between 1938–39 and 1942–43 and by the end of that time was nearly triple what it had been at the end of World War I.

The culture

The period produced not only Joseph Furphy’s Such Is Life (1903) but also the work of Henry Handel Richardson (pseudonym of Ethel F.L. Richardson, later Robertson), another contender as “the great Australian novelist.” In The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (three volumes, 1917, 1925, 1929), Richardson told the anguish of the central character, modeled on her father, as he sought to come to terms with Australian life. The tension of dual loyalties to Britain and Australia was a major concern also of Martin Boyd, whose long career as a novelist began in the 1920s. A more exclusively nationalist tone pervaded many tales of Outback life and historical novel sagas. An early notable novel of urban life was Louis Stone’s Jonah (1911); a later contributor to this genre was Vance Palmer (especially The Swayne Family, 1934), who, with his wife Nettie, won fame as a literary critic and selfless patron of the aspiring young.

The most significant contribution in poetry came from a group in Sydney influenced by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the late 19th-century French innovators. Outstanding was Christopher John Brennan, a major theorist of Symbolism. While calling on their Australian background, these men gave a sophistication to their poetic world that lifted it far from Outback balladry. Associated with this group was Norman Lindsay, an artist, novelist, and sculptor. The novelist Christina Stead was another product of this milieu.

In art the rural landscape dominated. Revolutionary changes in European art were relatively slow in affecting Australia, but a few artists did produce some notable work of imaginative technique. In Percy Grainger Australia produced (but did not retain) a musician of remarkable originality and ability. Architecture promised an interesting chapter with the selection of the American Walter Burley Griffin’s design for the city of Canberra. In practice his design was much mutilated, but Griffin did do some important work in both Melbourne and Sydney.

One outstanding new area to which the universities contributed was anthropology; a chief protagonist was A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (professor of anthropology at the University of Sydney, 1925–31). Australians increasingly filled faculty posts, although most who did so were graduates of either Oxford or Cambridge universities, while some of the most able native intellects worked overseas. The University of Western Australia, founded in 1911, drew on one of the most substantial philanthropic bequests in Australian history (from the newspaper editor Sir John Winthrop Hackett) and initially charged no fees. Other university foundations were Queensland (1909) and colleges at Canberra and Armidale. State-owned secondary schools developed throughout the period, although the achievement was scarcely comparable to the development of primary education in the early period.

Australia was in the forefront of filmmaking early in the century, but this early promise soon faded. A.B. Paterson’s Waltzing Matilda became Australia’s best-known song—part folk hymn and part national anthem. Radio had an impact in Australia equal to that elsewhere; radio stations became a mark of urban status, and the Australian Broadcasting Commission became a major force in culture and journalism. Radio helped make the 1930s probably the most sports-conscious decade in Australia’s history. Cricket, tennis, swimming, boxing, and horse racing were areas of athletic excellence. Aviation moved from sport to enterprise to business; Charles Kingsford-Smith, who established several long-distance records, was the most famous hero, and Qantas the most successful airline.

The Aboriginals

Early in the century governments tended to be still more authoritarian and intrusive in their policies on Aboriginals. This was notably so in Western Australia, where the most brutal of direct clashes continued. Reports of such events in the later 1920s stirred those Christian and humanitarian forces that had always recognized the violence and injustice of Australia’s racial experience; the new anthropology abetted such concern. Commonwealth governments gave these voices some heed, especially after 1937, although only in the Northern Territory did the government control policy. In 1932 the formation, under William Cooper, of the Australian Aboriginals League spurred black political action—which had some history back to the 1840s. Cooper and William Ferguson organized protest against Australia’s sesquicentennial celebrations in January 1938: “There are enough of us remaining to expose the humbug of your claims, as White Australians, to be a civilised, progressive, kindly and humane nation.”

Australia from 1945 to c. 1983

Postwar expansion

World War II generated economic vigour that continued into the 1970s. While some groups suffered disadvantages, that period, the 1960s especially, ranked as something of a golden age. The population nearly doubled by 1976, with expenditure per head increasing by roughly the same proportion. This prosperity reflected the general Western experience and depended much upon the export of basic commodities—notably wool in the 1950s and minerals thereafter. Domestic manufacturing also expanded remarkably and with considerable sophistication: manufactured goods included iron and steel wares, electric and electronic goods, and automobiles (production of “Australia’s own car,” the Holden, began in 1948). Output per worker increased, and working hours were lessened.

The number of private automobiles increased eight-fold by 1970, and the car joined the personally owned home as a lodestone of most Australian lives. Tourism and travel enriched traditional leisure patterns, which continued to be strong. The holding of the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956 symbolized the nation’s enthusiasm for sport and its production of world champions, notably swimmers. Television in Australia effectively began with the broadcast of the 1956 Olympics and soon came to exercise its characteristic influence.

Domestic politics to 1975

On John Curtin’s death in July 1945, he was succeeded as prime minister by another ALP stalwart, Joseph Benedict (Ben) Chifley. Influenced by Keynesian theory, their governments maintained close control of the economy and even contemplated nationalization of the private banks. Welfare policies expanded, as did the dominance of the commonwealth government over the states, although the latter remained important. At all these levels, and elsewhere, it was evident how much larger and more expert the federal public service had become.

As the Cold War intensified Chifley’s policies seemed dangerously radical to conservative eyes. Such apprehension fed on the disruptive tactics pursued by Communist Party supporters, especially in trade unions. Robert Menzies, who in 1944 had founded the Liberal Party as a successor to the United Australia Party, addressed these issues. In December 1949 he was elected prime minister. His and all future non-Labor governments were coalitions of the Liberal and Country parties, with the former dominant.

Menzies stayed in office until 1966. A man of great political competence, he also benefited much from the period’s prosperity. His governments continued to monitor the economy to useful effect. Menzies personally did much to increase spending on education and on the development of Canberra. He continued to present himself as a crusader against communism and to allege that Labor’s leaders failed to check its evil. (The 1954 defection of Vladimir Petrov, a Soviet diplomat-agent in Canberra, strengthened Menzies’ hand.) The ALP floundered under the erratic leadership (1951–60) of Herbert Vere Evatt; an anticommunist element, somewhat influenced by the Catholic Social Movement (see above), split away to form the Democratic Labor Party. This party won only a few seats but drastically weakened the ALP.

Menzies was succeeded by his longtime lieutenant, Harold Holt, who had little time to make any distinctive impact before his sudden death in December 1967. His successor, John Grey Gorton, proved more assertive, especially of a sharper national interest in economic and diplomatic affairs. Gorton lost ground with both the electorate and parliamentary colleagues, and in early 1971 he gave way to another Liberal, William McMahon.

Meanwhile Labor had found new force under Edward Gough Whitlam. He personified the importance within the party of an intelligentsia, radicalized in modest degree by liberationist and countercultural forces of the day as well as by more traditional left-wing sympathies. The failure of McMahon to become a convincing leader gave Labor its long-denied chance, and in December 1972 Whitlam became prime minister.

Whitlam’s governments were extremely active, if not always effectual. Many initiatives vitalized intellectual and cultural pursuits. A stronger sense of Australian identity prevailed, and some imperial symbols were abandoned. The government encouraged wage increases (including equal pay for women) and spent much on social services, notably health and urban amenities. To many, it appeared as if Whitlam were shaping a new and better Australia.

Others saw the government as reckless and dangerous. Some of its members did lean toward irresponsibility. Critics fought hard and bitterly, especially after the accession to opposition leadership in March 1975 of the Liberal John Malcolm Fraser. The government lacked a majority in the Senate, which accordingly deferred approval of revenue supply, the intent being to force Whitlam to call an election. The complex constitutional issue that thus arose required the adjudication of the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, the formal head of state under the crown. Kerr had been nominated (for the Queen’s approval) by Whitlam, but on November 11, 1975, he dismissed Whitlam and appointed Fraser interim prime minister. Kerr’s actions sparked excitement, and among Whitlam’s admirers, outrage. An election in December gave a handsome victory to Fraser.

International affairs

Both world wars encouraged, even forced, Australian governments to assert themselves internationally. The ALP had generally tended toward a forthright international policy. Appropriately, therefore, the Curtin and Chifley governments, especially in the person of Evatt, took a significant part in founding the United Nations. Evatt helped secure recognition of the rights of smaller nations in the United Nations and served as president of the United Nations General Assembly in 1948–49. The Labor governments also had some sympathy for Asian nationalist movements, most importantly in Indonesia.

With the accession of Menzies and the deepening of the Cold War, attitudes became more conservative. Sentimental ties of empire remained strong enough for the visit of Queen Elizabeth II in 1954 to provoke mass emotion. Menzies, an ardent royalist, upheld the British position in the Suez Crisis of 1956. Yet overall the stronger theme was Australian acceptance of U.S. dominance—all the more inexorable as the United Kingdom abandoned much of the modest interest it had cherished for Australia. The U.S. alliance crystallized in the 1951 Australia–New Zealand–United States (ANZUS) Pact, reinforced (1955–77) by the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Only the Whitlam government chafed at the alliance, and then but in part. Australia followed the United States’ lead in such crises as the Korean (1950–53) and Vietnam (1955–75) wars and, a generation later, the Persian Gulf War (1990–91). Australia did not recognize the People’s Republic of China until 1972–73. U.S. satellite-tracking stations and other facilities functioned on Australian soil.

Relations with Japan were particularly important. Antagonism ran strong in the postwar years and lingered for decades. Nevertheless, trade recommenced in 1949 and grew rapidly; by 1966–67 Japan had surpassed the United Kingdom as the nation receiving the largest share of Australia’s exports, and it was second only to the United States as the largest supplier of imports.

While the influence of Asian communism was feared and Japan was regarded with suspicion, more genial relationships developed in the Hemisphere. The Colombo Plan, which went into effect in 1951, provided for Australia to give aid to its friends within the region and began an inflow of Asian students into Australia that became a permanent and considerable phenomenon. The minister for external affairs between 1951 and 1960 was Richard Gardiner Casey. He was unique among Australians in his experience of traditional diplomacy, yet he was ready and able to come to terms with the new Asia. As Indonesia became an ever more populous, and sometimes assertive, nation, there was wariness in Australia, but the fall of Sukarno in 1966 helped stabilize relations for many years. The grant of self-government to Papua New Guinea by the Whitlam government came early enough to provide some basis for goodwill into the future.

Immigration

Meanwhile vast population changes had begun. Traditionally Labor had been suspicious of mass immigration, seeing it as a threat to established wages and standards. Yet in 1946 the ALP government initiated a policy that assisted the entry not only of people from the United Kingdom but also of many others from war-distressed Europe. The peak year of net immigration (about 150,000) was 1950, while the greatest numbers of assisted migrants (about 100,000 per annum) came in the later 1960s. While it has been modified many times, this overall policy has remained in place. Closer ties with Australia’s Asian neighbours, however, moved toward abandoning the policy of virtual exclusion of “coloured” immigrants. From the late 1960s such restrictions were eased. The acceptance of refugees from Indochina was the most palpable evidence of the new policy. The diversification of ethnicity and culture provoked both critics and enthusiasts.

In general the new migration proved an economic boost. Many newcomers suffered alienation and discrimination; tensions existed between the new migrant groups as well as between “old” Australians and new—but on the whole this was one of the happier chapters in the Australian experience. Continuing debate pondered the relative merits of “assimilation” as against “multiculturalism”—i.e., minimizing or encouraging the migrants’ retention of their native customs. Especially after 1970 the latter policy had official favour, but migration had surprisingly only marginal impact on established sociopolitical structures. Many tongues were heard and many cuisines eaten, but suburban living near the big cities was as compelling a goal for most migrants as for their Anglo-Celtic forerunners, and their values were shaped accordingly. It made Australia a more interesting place, if one of less social ease.

Strains of modern radicalism

It was suggested above that “New Left” ideas had some part in the victory and policies of Whitlamite Labor. While this radicalism, like its precursors, never went to extremes in Australia and soon passed its peak, its influence lingered. It found formal expression in a new political party, the Australian Democrats, which was founded in 1977 and succeeded to the Democratic Labor Party’s role as a minority party of significant effect. The new radicalism also helped shape thought and action in other, more diffuse, ways.

Aboriginal activism became more assertive than it had been since the days of physical attack on European settlers. The estimated number of persons of Aboriginal descent had risen from a nadir of 73,828 in 1933 to more than 170,000 in the early 1980s; in 1962 Aboriginals received the franchise and, for the first time, were to be counted in the national census. Aboriginal claims moved from wage equality with Europeans to land rights over territory with Aboriginal associations. The South Australian government acted in this direction from 1966, and the federal Aboriginal Land Rights Act (1976), applying to the Northern Territory, was particularly important. In 1967 the general electorate overwhelmingly supported a constitutional amendment to increase Commonwealth powers in Aboriginal matters. Equality in formal civic rights, wage payments, and social welfare benefits became the norm. Some groups received considerable royalties from mining activities on their land.

The Whitlam government in particular encouraged a variety of ethnic organizations, most importantly the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (founded in 1973, from 1977 renamed the National Aboriginal Conference). These organizations contributed to a growing strength and pride in Aboriginality. Early in the period Aboriginals became known for their contributions to sport (boxer Lionel Rose, tennis player Evonne Goolagong Cawley). Later Aboriginals became celebrated in the fields of public administration (Charles Perkins, Patricia O’Shane), art (Yirawala, Michael Jagamara Nelson, Emily Kngwarreye), literature (Kath Walker, Colin Johnson, Sally Morgan), and politics (Neville Thomas Bonner, senator, 1971–83, and Aden Ridgeway, senator from 1999).

While various researchers had been expanding knowledge of the antiquity and richness of Aboriginal life, not all Aboriginals accepted the right and capacity of white scholars to comprehend the tribal past, but this attitude itself affirmed their independence. School curricula began to provide sympathetic teaching of Aboriginal culture to all Australians. Such policies reinforced a shift away from assimilationist ideas. This shift applied nationwide but had particular relevance in sustaining the surviving remnants of tribal life. In the late 20th century the number of Aboriginals with some experience of traditional Aboriginal life was estimated to be about 10,000.

Increased awareness of past depredations against the Aboriginals helped shape a wider-ranging critique of the Australian experience. Dissidents influenced by the New Marxism of the later 1960s (notably Humphrey McQueen in his A New Britannia, first published in 1970) saw the nation as ever dominated by petty bourgeois standards—mean, acquisitive, racist, and authoritarian. Many earlier commentators had perceived such traits, but now they were attacked with more fundamental repugnance. The dismissal of Whitlam in 1975 encouraged the belief that essentially Australia was not a democracy and that it suffered much from a heritage of subservience to British imperial standards. While this radical critique lost some acerbity after 1980, it left an impression, especially on the liberal intelligentsia. One result was greater emphasis on the dignity and autonomy of Australian-centred cultural studies. Robert Hughes’s The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding (1987), a vivid account of the experiences of both transported convicts and colonists that became an international best-seller, explored Australia’s origins as a colony and its search for a national identity.

Environmental activism developed, often spurred by repugnance to the exploitative development that radicals saw, with much truth, as central to Australian history since 1788. Some aspects of environmentalism gained support across a wide spectrum. Most state governments introduced controls about 1970. There was a particularly emotional campaign to save beautiful Lake Pedder in Tasmania from conversion into a hydroelectric dam. The campaign failed in 1973, but in that year the federal government established an inquiry into the national estate, from which resulted the Australian Heritage Commission Act in 1975. In 1982 the High Court agreed that the Commonwealth had power to override states on environmental matters should the issue in question come within the purview of an international covenant to which Australia was a party. Environmentalists have exercised considerable influence as pressure groups and have made some essays into parliamentary politics: in 1989 a “Green” group acquired the balance of power in Tasmania, aided by the system of proportional representation prevailing there. While Australia contributed only a little to the mainstream of environmental theory, Peter Singer of Monash University won international renown for his exposition of animal rights.

Miriam Dixson in The Real Matilda (1976) argued that Australian women had suffered an inferior status, markedly below that of women in Western society at large. Her case was arguable, but the increasing volume of feminist studies more often stressed the achievements of women, though often against great odds, in many sectors of society and culture. Feminists played an important part in the expansion of Australian studies; women increased their share in Australian literary work, often writing on feminist themes. Germaine Greer, born in Melbourne, achieved eminence for her writings.

The number of women physicians and lawyers in Australia rose significantly, but more sizable still was the impact of women in the public service. Some succeeded in federal politics, and a greater number at the state level: in 1990 Carmen Lawrence (in Western Australia) and Joan Kirner (in Victoria) were the first women to become leaders of governments.

Gay and lesbian activism followed much the same path in Australia as elsewhere; Sydney was said to have become one of the major “gay” cities of the world. Seemingly in inverse relation to sexual activity, or at least to discussion of it, there was a decline in marriage and fertility rates. One in three marriages contracted after 1970 seemed likely to end in divorce. Into the 1990s there remained doubt as to how fundamental the changes in attitude and social structure associated with such developments might prove.

Cultural achievements

Patrick White’s winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1973) most obviously indicated a new level of cultural attainment. Among Australia’s renowned writers are the poets Les Murray and Judith Wright; novelists Peter Carey, David Malouf, Thomas Keneally, and Thea Astley; and playwright David Williamson. The painter Sir Sidney Nolan produced a vast body of compelling work, often inspired by Australian themes. Fred Williams worked within a narrower range but produced intense, novel, and entrancing representations of the Australian landscape. Aboriginal painter Albert Namatjira created world-renowned watercolour landscapes depicting the terrain of central Australia.

The work of Australian composers such as Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards, and Richard Meale approached world standing. The soprano Joan Sutherland emulated Melba with her superb coloratura voice. Many of Sutherland’s triumphs took place at the Sydney Opera House, the supreme shrine of culture in Australia, completed (after many problems) in 1973. Art exhibitions and cultural festivals much enriched Australian life, most substantially in the smaller capitals. The Australian Broadcasting Commission (called the Australian Broadcasting Corporation after 1983) remained very important as a sustainer of orchestral music and sponsored most of the somewhat meagre amount of quality television. Governments were much more generous than their precursors in Australia (although scarcely more so than many counterparts elsewhere) in funding opera and ballet. The film industry had a notable florescence in the 1970s, and continued fairly active thereafter.

The 1960s was the golden age for tertiary education. Universities expanded enormously. The Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University (one of the visionary achievements of the 1940s Labor governments) was unique in being research-oriented, but its activity was matched elsewhere. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization also grew rapidly in the 1960s and ’70s. In addition to Patrick White, Australia’s Nobel laureates were Sir John Cornforth (1975), for chemistry, and Sir Macfarlane Burnet (1960), Sir John Eccles (1963), and Peter C. Doherty (1996), for work in the medical sciences.

Australia since 1983

Domestic issues

Fraser served as prime minister until March 1983; then the Labor Party returned to office, and Robert (Bob) Hawke’s term lasted still longer. Under pressure from colleagues, Hawke resigned in December 1991, and Paul Keating succeeded him as party leader and prime minister. The electorate switched in March 1996, and John Howard led a coalition of Liberal and National (formerly, until 1983, Country) parties that remained in power for 11 years. Every government won at least two successive elections, and most more than that, testifying to mainstream contentment. The Labor Party came to have virtually as many middle-class professionals among its leaders as did the Liberals, and—at least when in office—gave scarcely less priority to running the economy according to the dictates of economic rationalism. By those standards the economy fared well, albeit suffering occasional setbacks (notably about 1990). Manufacturing declined considerably, but that had some balance in greater diversification and efficiency. Export of basic commodities remained vital, and international price fluctuations had less immediate impact than in the past. Unemployment figures were higher than in the previous generation, but more women were in the workforce. Many Australians enjoyed comfort, even affluence. A UN survey in 2000 placed Australia fourth in terms of quality of life worldwide.

There always remained some poverty and desolation. While dominant discourses stressed human rights, equality, freedom, and potential, older notions of social homogeneity seemed, if anything, yet further from realization. One division to widen was that between the big cities and rural Australia. This tension helped create the most remarkable phenomenon of the 1990s, the One Nation movement. Led by Pauline Hanson, One Nation invoked an older and not altogether mythical Australia of Anglo-Celtic ethnicity and sturdy independence. Hanson herself won election to the federal parliament in 1996, and in the Queensland state election of mid 1998 several of her followers also succeeded. Hanson lost her seat in 1998, and her movement subsequently fell apart, but its very existence told something of the national mood.

A much-publicized decision in 1992 (the Mabo case) seemed to promise a radical legitimation of indigenous land-rights claims. It confirmed that Australia was already occupied in a manner recognizable under British law when the first white settlers arrived. The court also ruled that, while native title had been exterminated over vast areas, it might still exist over leaseholds and unoccupied crown land. The resulting Native Title Act (1993) was unsuccessfully challenged, and subsequently, under its judgment in 1996 (the Wik case), the High Court decided that native title and pastoral leasehold could coexist. Aboriginal descent became a matter of pride, and by the early 21st century the number affirming themselves to be Aboriginal was some half million.

Meanwhile, despite such advances, the bleakness of much Aboriginal experience remained stark and disturbing—illness, alcoholism, and violence all having their part. The many deaths of Aboriginal men while in official custody added to such feeling, and still more so invocation of the long history of Aboriginal families being forcibly separated. While all governments upheld the desirability of racial reconciliation, they remained reluctant to make a formal apology for past wrongs.

Debate as to constitutional change quickened in the late 1990s, many seeing the time as opportune for a shift to republican status. However, when the matter came to referendum vote in 1999, republicans divided over how radical their intended change should be. With many other Australians still attached to traditional and even monarchical sentiment, the referendum failed decisively.

Following four consecutive electoral wins, John Howard and the Liberal-National coalition were swept from power with the November 2007 election victory of Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party. Under Rudd, Labor advocated proactive domestic policies to preserve the environment, to improve education, public hospitals, and the country’s infrastructure, and to establish a fair and flexible work environment for all Australians. Rudd also favoured a plan to extricate Australian soldiers from Iraq, where they had been assisting in the U.S.-led war effort. In a historic address on Feb. 13, 2008, Rudd issued a formal apology to Aboriginal peoples for abuses they suffered under early Australian administrations.

In 2009 the linchpin of Rudd’s environmental initiative, the Emissions Trading Scheme, failed to gain passage, and, when he withdrew the legislation in 2010, his action was criticized in some quarters as timid. Rudd’s hold on power was further threatened by strident opposition from business groups to the controversial Resource Super Profits Tax, a proposal targeted at the mining industry and scheduled to go into effect in 2012. Support for Rudd within the Labor Party waned so much that he did not even contest a leadership vote in June 2010 in which Julia Gillard replaced him as party leader. She became Australia’s first woman prime minister.

Foreign policy and immigration

Australia gave enthusiastic welcome to 2000. The Summer Olympic Games were held in Sydney, and the country made use of the centenary of the creation of the federal Commonwealth of Australia as an occasion of both celebration and soul-searching.

Before 1940 Australia had had only a tiny diplomatic service, but thereafter this arm of government (often associated with trade-oriented services) had expanded. The nation’s new ethnic diversity increased the need for professional diplomats. Successive prime ministers were busy travelers, ready to develop Australia’s image in world eyes. Activity continued within the UN and the British Commonwealth, but increasingly emphasis lay on Australia’s role in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. While this stance was appropriate to Australia’s geopolitical reality, it entailed problems. Malaysia had long scorned Australia’s claims to empathy with Asia. Relations with Indonesia fluctuated and were never so tense as in 1999–2000, when Australia abandoned its earlier (and much-criticized) acceptance of the absorption of East Timor within Indonesia and led the UN forces that oversaw East Timor’s independence. Troubles in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands, all provoking violence in 2000, posed difficulties to which there were no easy answers.

By the early 21st century about one-third of “settler” immigrants were Asian, a situation that became strained as criticism arose—from across the sociopolitical spectrum—of policies that seemed likely to result in an ever-expanding population. Moreover, many would-be migrants differed from the model of skill, youth, and sociability that governments inevitably preferred. While basic immigration patterns continued, greater scrutiny and selectivity prevailed, especially of those seeking refugee status.

Prime ministers of Australia

The table provides a chronological list of the prime ministers of Australia.